In March and April, Claudio Mekler, the owner of five retail centers in shopping centers in South Florida, was busy. As COVID was forcing his tenants to close their businesses, he was focused on working out forbearance deals with them.
"When making the decisions on forbearance, we analyzed each case and made one-on-one decisions based on real data," Mekler says. "We negotiated agreements that benefited the tenant, our investors and our lenders."
That strategy mitigated the current need for rent relief. Mekler took a personalized approach to each situation. If, for instance, a tenant paid six months in advance, he would reduce its rent by 50 percent. He let a tenant who was halfway through construction of a new store defer rent payments in April and May so they would only have to pay the Common Area Maintenance (CAM) fees during that time.
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Leslie Shaver
Les Shaver has been covering commercial and residential real estate for almost 20 years. His work has appeared in Multifamily Executive, Builder, units, Arlington Magazine in addition to GlobeSt.com and Real Estate Forum.
